


vanishing point (all horizons still lead back to you)

by reflectionslie (fallsink)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Car Racing, Alternate Universe - Racing, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Race car AU, Racing, Strangers to Lovers, bb8 is a vintage car, down and dirty is the whole vibe, is there such thing as angst with no plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 01:23:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15183656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallsink/pseuds/reflectionslie
Summary: When all’s been said and done, the car is his religion.(or, in which poe is an ex-racer and rey brings him back and also to the future)





	vanishing point (all horizons still lead back to you)

**Author's Note:**

> pls don’t @ me, I know nothing about cars, but [this](http://soul8.tumblr.com/post/170656403950/) spoke to me. idea and beautiful set credits to its owner  
> and 4 months later, this is finally done.

When all’s been said and done, the car is his religion, the only thing he believes in anymore.

The vintage Jaguar 150 S Roadster, as they affectionately call it BeeBee, sits patiently as Rey adjusts the driver’s seat and mirrors. Its black paint matches the smooth concrete under their feet, its orange contrasting against the gunmetal gray of cement rivers filling up potholes and weathered fissures.

Her smile is so radiant against the high afternoon sun and he can’t look away while he hands her the jumble of keys (not that he ever has been able to). It’s so dazzling that not even the split lip and injuries that she still sustains on her nose and fingers and arms could even take away from it.

Hell, he thinks it even adds something so untouchably honest to her – there no lies or trickery or blind faith in any part of the tapestry of her being.

No angel, god or mythical thing could ever compare to her because they did not exist.

But she does.

BeeBee hums awake at the click of ignition with a smooth puur, and something ignites in her too. Her brilliant green eyes trained ahead on the open road, on a spot he could not see, small hands gripping the steering wheel.

“Be careful,” he says, still leaning on the edge of her rolled-down window.

Normally she would scoff at this, both of them knowing full well she’s more than capable of taking care of herself.

But today, she doesn’t. Instead, she leans out of the window ledge, slender arm grazing against his long sleeves, and meets his eyes and says, “I know.” The unsaid _I will_ hangs like the dust in the stagnant air.

He hesitates, just long enough for her to raise her eyebrows, but she does not push him. Not today, not this time.

And a surge of emotions well up inside him, affection, worry, guilt. It’s his fault that she had gotten hurt first in the place. Both of them knowing full well she’s more than capable of taking care of herself, but _god_ did he wish that he had been there to stop it anyway.

Letting her drive BeeBee seems so insufficient compared to what he should owe her.

But she had those always knowing, searching green eyes, taking him apart without touching and understanding. So she had only asked for this because both of them know that he would’ve never forgiven himself if she had said nothing, since he had already dragged himself over every crack to hell and back over it again.

So he nods and closes his eyes, and turns away, but not before giving the metal side reluctant yet still affectionate pat.

But he doesn’t hear them go, even when he’s made a few strides back towards the open door of the garage. He twists back in confusion.

She hasn’t moved a muscle, still resting a bare arm on the window. The shadows from BeeBee’s hood both accentuate and hide the scabs and cuts on her skin. The brilliant sun moving between clouds do nothing to distract from her taking him apart with her stare alone. A question, a consideration, and a challenge all in one.

“Come in.”

He’s moving before his mind can register, and it only catches up just as he slides in the shotgun seat and meet her eyes. All he can think is how it’s always like this – him always being pulled by her gravity. The slamming of the door that follows him feels almost too final.

Though he knows she is looking only at him, he can’t meet it fully, so he tilts the trajectory of his gaze to past her to his garage. His makeshift shop, which had once been his sanctuary, a sacred house of worship, is now a ruined temple laid to waste.

Skeletons of a life far gone are scattered around the floor, fallen relics reminding him of a time now trapped in worthless bronze.

A glint of sunlight strikes against something silver and he remembers his torque wrench on the concrete floor. AutoCraft 3/8 DR, hardly used.

“You have a Jaguar! Are you _insane_?”

He cringes now at the clarity of the sharp metallic _CLANG!_ of the wrench being kicked aside in his memory the first time she had seen BeeBee.

Earlier that summer she had moved to the house next door, left behind by the older parents who had just sent their youngest to college. He intended to treat her like every new family that came into the area – ignore them and slam the doors in their face if they came to call.

But she was persistent and rang his doorbell three different occasions before he made an offhanded comment about her being as young and irrelevant as her 1994 Ford Thunderbird.

She flushed then and avoided his eyes to mutter something about “it was the cheapest” and “saving for a Camaro or a Miata.”

He stopped dead and looked at her. _Really_ looked at her. “What is a girl like you,” he said, “want with cars like that?”

There were sparks when she met his eyes. “What else? Racing.”

Just like that, they had bonded almost too easily over their love for cars, speed races, and how they both knew the name of every Formula ONE champion.

"You can't keep a Jaguar in a garage!” she had flared a few nights after they met. She had forgotten a pipe she had asked him to fix and he had went to sitting with BeeBee. He didn’t respond, aside from pausing in his step back into the house. “It's … it’s a _crime_ against nature!"

But she didn’t miss the long sleeves he always wore despite the desert heat outside; or his perpetually unshaven cheeks and chin, pricklier in more ways than one; or his silence; or how his scarce smiles were always miles away from ever reaching his eyes…

She saw it all, but didn’t know what it meant until another day she stumbled upon him shedding his grease- and sweat-soaked shirt.

He knew she had seen it, by the way her stare travelled dropping from the edge of his jaw, along his neck, and down his back, following the deep scar that fissures against his desert-worn skin. So he doesn’t try to hide it, he had no need to anymore.

Dropping his chin down towards the grungy floor, he knew what was going to happen next. The questions, the withdrawing, the detachment …

But maybe she would be different, he thought bitterly. Maybe she’d spare him bringing back old ghosts and just leave without any questions or words.

She was different, but not in the way he thought.

She was different because she did not turn or shy away from him. If anything her mouth tightened where the rest of her expression did not, her lips forming a firm line while her eyebrows unfurrowed and green eyes melted to something deeply primal and... tender.

There was no investigation, no pretending.

Only long, unhurried steps until she is before him. Only a light brush of his unkempt bangs from his eyes and warm touch to raise his eyes up. Only a quiver at her bottom lip that both emphasized and betrayed her strength.

He was struck at that instant of how much she knew of him, in just a short time. Of how he didn’t know when she had snuck in through a door he hadn’t – couldn’t – ever close, and of how he found that he didn’t mind.

Not when she was then coating her soft lips with grime and sweat. Kissing his dirty sand-worn skin, arms, shoulders, neck, ears, cheeks, nose everywhere except his own lips, murmuring his name like a secret and broken prayer.

He had found then that she kissed the same way she worked on cars, machinery, anything.

She didn’t just go through the motions, she _invested_ in it.

She took her time, opening him up, taking him apart little by little, piece by piece as she attempted to find the source of the issue.

The accident, the nightmares, the pain, it all fell behind like dislodged and worthless junk, broken parts, rusted and all. She pried him apart and once she found it, she was relentless, pushing, prodding and coaxing and tuning. Until he could do nothing but let go and give into her ministrations, unravelling the heavy tension had built up in his shoulders, back, and car wreck of a body, letting himself learn beneath her touch how to run smoothly again...

Something glints from the corner of his eye and he glances up to the rearview mirror. He only gets a glimpse of maybe something like glass or stray metal, before a warm hand grasps his chin to face back forward.

“Stop looking back,” she says, oasis-green eyes never leaving the front as BeeBee growls in preparation. “There’s nothing for you there anymore.”

He only barely gets a moment to process before the well-oiled motor roars in victory and they’re speeding off down the desert road. Faster, fasterfaster… Speedometer climbing higher, higherhigher…

In all of this, everything around him, he had forgot how much he loved – no, _loves_ – this. How he can’t look anywhere but ahead. Just pure complete reckless freedom.

He remembers the last time he felt like this, when he had told her it all in cathartic abandon.

Of the accident, the drinking, the night terrors that had soon twisted his passion into unspeakably dark things curling behind his eyelids. Of how everyone seems to forget that tomorrow is never promised and they always take for granted that the past is set in stone.

How she had never shied away from him.

Not that first time she had seen his scar, not when he tried to push her away, not now.

He had found then that first night, in the darkness of the crowded, low-lit garage, that she kissed the same way she worked on cars.

She didn’t just go through the motions, she _invested_ in it.

She took her time that night, easing him back against the side of the Jaguar, hips nudging up against his, tongue against tongue, her nimble hands wandering below hems. Opening him up, taking him apart little by little, piece by piece as she attempted to find the source of the issue.

The accident, the nightmares, the pain, he remembers how it all had fallen so far behind like dislodged leaves in the torrenting rush of wind.

Because once she found it, she was relentless, pushing, prodding and coaxing and tuning. Until he could do nothing but let go and give into her ministrations, unravelling the heavy tension had built up in his shoulders, back, and car wreck of a body, letting himself learn beneath her touch how to run smoothly again...

But with that help came a different problem entirely.

Her open mouthed kisses were as lethal as they were soothing, because it meant he was vulnerable, left bare for her to see – body, mind, and soul. And after spending so many years alone, it was so difficult to open up like this again, to let someone else see him like this.

Yet, when she licked across the cracked edges of his lips then gasped at his strong hands clutching at her hips, he decided he didn’t want to fight it, even if he could.

He never could.

She laughs then, jerking him back in the present, such wild joy in her whole body and veins, as her hands leave the steering wheel for the breath of a second that stretches on forever, her oasis eyes trained ahead.

The car is his religion, and she had already found it a worthy god. As he watches the sleek machinery running so beautifully beneath her touch, it seems to find her a deserving believer.

He thinks that this is what the future must be like – the open road, the windows cranked down, the vanishing point on the horizon, the tank full of gas, her.

And he thinks that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have faith in one more thing, if it means that he can have this – _all_ of this – for even just a moment longer.

**Author's Note:**

> this is my horrific re-entrance to the writing world from a looooooong stint in writer's block, so I'll come back and edit at another point
> 
> pls come cry w me or yell @ me on [tumblr](soul8.tumblr.com)


End file.
